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Spike Lee: “I’m Not Angry, Dammit!”
By Kyle | September 30, 2008
I just caught up to last week’s New Yorker profile of Spike Lee, who is pictured wearing a T-shirt reading, “Obama is the new black.” The article isn’t available online, but it’s got some great stuff in it. For instance, there is a scene in which Lee and the composer of the incredibly overwrought score for Lee’s latest flop, “Miracle at St. Anna,” seem to egg each other on to make the score even worse (”Was the brass big enough?” asks the composer Terence Blanchard. “Hell, yeah,” Lee said. He laughed, jumped up and down, and shouted, “God damn!”). A flunky comes in and asks Lee and Blanchard to sign the poster for the movie so it can be framed and hung in the studio.
“Yeah, O.K.,” Lee said brusquely. He added, “We want the John Williams spot”–referring to the composer who writes the endlessly imitated music for Steven Spielberg’s movies.
“You’ll be right next to John Williams,” the Sony man said, in a mollifying tone. “How’s that?”
“We want the John Williams-Spielberg, you know?” Lee repeated.
“We’ll take down the ‘Memoirs of a Geisha,’ and put yours–”
“Don’t put us next to Judd Apapoe, whatever that guy is,” Lee interrupted, referring to Judd Apatow, the director of the goofball comedies ‘Knocked Up’ and ‘The 40-Year-Old Virgin.’ “We gotta be next to Spielberg and Williams!”
“You got it,” the man said. He obtained the signatures, then scurried away like a soldier ducking enemy fire.
The subtext is, as always with Lee: Cross me and you’re a racist. If you even point out that he’s angry or obsessed with race, that also makes you a racist. Later in the article, Lee says, “People think I’m this angry black man walking around in a constant state of rage.” Well. In the same paragraph, writer John Colapinto says, “Afterward, when some of Lee’s fans gathered to ask for autographs, Lee responded to the smiling face of a white woman from Cincinnati with a glare so unwelcoming that she quickly retreated.” And this is in front of a reporter. What would Lee act like if he weren’t on his best behavior?
Perhaps worse than calling someone a racist is calling someone a “house negro,” which implies treason. It’s “one of his favorite taunts to African-Americans against whom he has a grudge,” says Colapinto. It is something Lee has apparently done on at least two occasions. Lee told the Washington Post that Samuel L. Jackson’s defense of Quentin Tarantino’s use of “nigger” in “Jackie Brown” was like “a house Negro defending Massa.” Lee claimed he was misquoted but went on to tell Colapinto, of BET head Robert Johnson, who supported Hillary Clinton for president, “Bob Johnson’s relatives, in slavery, his relatives were in the house. They were called house Negroes….’Massa, them niggers about to uprise! What we gonna do?’” Lee also lent credence to the urban myth that the federal government blew up the levees in New Orleans in his documentary on Hurricane Katrina, defending his decision on a DVD commentary track: “Many African-Americans–and I include myself in this group–don’t put anything past the United States government when it comes to black people.”
The best line in the article (which reminds us that Barack and Michelle Obama’s first date was going to see “Do the Right Thing”) goes to the critic Stanley Crouch, who says,
“The fact that Spike Lee is a talented guy is inarguable. But if you make movies as consistently inferior to the movies of a man like Woody Allen or Martin Scorsese and cry ‘racism’ or imply racism, when your movies are not as successful as theirs are–what is that? On a human level, his comprehension of other people is far more shallow than theirs is, and that’s the basic problem that he’s had from the beginning of his career, the fundamental shallowness that you get from a propagandist.”
Topics: Barack Obama, Movies, New York City, Politics |
September 30th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
The problem with Spike Lee and many of his ilk are there is no deterrent preventing them from their race baiting since they are consistently rewarded for it. You have people like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton who have made millions accusing people of being racist and being professional hate mongers, Spike Lee is the same. A white director with Lee’s ability and inability to produce a hit would have been out of Hollywood a long time ago.
September 30th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
Lee shares with Hitchcock a talent for self-promotion. What he does not share with Hitchcock is the ability to edit, score, design and and direct. He is the Uwe Boll of arthouse pictures, a semi-competent hack given a free ride by white liberal guilt: he is racist bore, a braggart, a blowhard and a blackguard.
September 30th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
The Uwe Boll of the arthouse scene? Yikes … still, it’s a good Tuesday when I agree with Mr. Tremayne.
September 30th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
I can’t believe I’m saying this but, Hunter, that was the most eloquent and insightful summation of Spike Lee I have read in a while.
Bravo
September 30th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
Spike is one angry little negro.
September 30th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
WTF?
Did I enter the twilight zone?
Hunter is spot on!
September 30th, 2008 at 3:38 pm
So how do you explain the likes of Joel Schumacher, Garry Marshall, and Brian DePalma (to name just three) still being gainfully employed in Hollywood, Brandon? Not that your point about Spike isn’t valid…
September 30th, 2008 at 5:40 pm
Hunter…there is hope for you yet. I think I just teared up a bit.
September 30th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
Nice one, Hunter.
September 30th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
But I wouldn’t go calling him a “blackguard.”